> a waste of time. However, perhaps my fourpennorth is worth five after
> all. I had a 386 and took the gubbins out from the inside, put a pentium
> in and hey presto for about 250 quid I got a computer on a par with ones
> costing over 1,000quid. - its just a thought.
We have often considered this, but found that it's not cost
effective.
First you need a new motherboard and a Pentium chip. Then the RAM is
not large enough and rarely fits the sockets on the new board. Next,
to ensure that you're not strangling the new processor you need to
junk your old display and i/o cards in favour of PCI cards. Next, the
old hard disk in your 386 usually isn't big enough, so you need a
new hard disk. A sound card and CDROM needs to be added if you don't
already have them. What's left? - Case, power supply and floppy
drive. And what about installation, transport and technician costs?
Unless you can do a selective upgrade for yourself, the cheapest
option is usually to buy a system unit and re-use the monitor.
NB. A good use for monitor-less 386's is as print servers on a
network!
Regards
Paul Dilley, Technical Manager
Computer Centre for People with Disabilities, University of Westminster
** The London & South East Regional Access Centre **
Tel: +44 171 911 5000 Fax: +44 171 911 5162 http://www.wmin.ac.uk/ccpd/
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